Making a regular practice of exploring innovative technological solutions to problems and gaps in humanitarian responses offers immense potential for improved and more sustainable service delivery, even as a crisis evolves into a longer-term development phase.
To achieve the most positive impact possible, these solutions must be co-created with the people they aim to serve.
This collaboration requires
Meaningful, ongoing engagement rather than one-time consultations
Flexible, iterative processes that can adapt to rapidly changing contexts
A holistic view of digital technology as one element in the humanitarian response
By following the principles, processes, and practical tips in this playbook, humanitarian practitioners can both leverage digital technology for better aid and strengthen accountability, trust, and equity.
Who is this playbook for?
This playbook has been designed for humanitarian practitioners, donors commissioning tech-focused programs, and technology providers.
The playbook can help humanitarians to think through how to tailor community engagement and participatory approaches to address a humanitarian challenge – from the earliest stages of problem identification, through to the development and deployment of a digital solution. For readers from a Human-Centered Design (HCD) or technology background, this playbook offers tips on how to adapt those principles to a humanitarian response.
How to use this playbook
The development and use of technology in humanitarian action involves decisions that directly affect people’s lives, safety, and dignity. Therefore, designing technology in these contexts requires more than technical solutions: it demands clear ethical principles, a deep understanding of communities, and a people-centered mindset.
This website brings together guidelines, approaches, and resources that support the responsible design and use of humanitarian technology and the goal is to accompany diverse teams in making informed, inclusive, and context-sensitive decisions, promoting technologies that respond to real needs and contribute to generating positive impact without causing harm.
The playbook is organised intro three main sections
This section establishes a common basis for making informed decisions, reducing risks, and ensuring that technology does no harm.
This section is not a complete or a conventional playbook to Human-Centered Design; instead it summarises the phases and techniques of HCD and relates them to the context of humanitarian emergencies.
This section provides guidance on mapping key actors, understanding team roles and alliances, and deepening knowledge of affected communities.
You will also find a section that help you put theory into practice
This section offers ready-to-use resources that help plan, facilitate participatory processes, document decisions, and apply ethical and people-centered principles throughout the design cycle.
Principles
Without careful consideration, digital solutions can exclude vulnerable groups, create unintended harm, or erode trust. Research for this project identified the following principles as the basis of a responsible approach to technology in humanitarian action:
Inclusiveness
Truly inclusive solutions imply actively engaging people on their terms, understanding their diverse needs, constraints and capacities, and ensuring that marginalized and at-risk groups are valued partners.
Accessibility
Humanitarian technology should meet people where they are, removing barriers related to language, literacy, physical condition, connectivity, geography and digital skills. Accessibility should be built into every stage of technology choices, design and usage.
Trust
No matter how well a solution is designed, it will be effective only if people trust it. Building and maintaining trust requires transparency, accountability, and meaningful community participation. Building and maintaining trust is not a tick-box exercise. Once earned, it must be continuously nurtured.
Relevance
Solutions must be problem-driven, not technology-driven. This requires deep engagement with people to hear how they define problems and to understand their actual needs rather than relying on assumptions. Interventions should be continuously validated by communities and adapted based on real-world conditions.
Safety
Technology use in humanitarian settings comes with significant risks. Organization must identify, assess, and actively mitigate potential harm, including physical security risks, data-protection concerns, and unintended consequences such as surveillance, exclusion, and misuse of personal information.
By embedding these principles into technology design and use, humanitarians and technology providers can ensure technology solutions empower and don’t exploit people affected by crises.
Read more about the wider Principles for Digital Development
What’s the goal of this playbook?
This playbook aims to bring those two worlds together in a practical and effective process – and adds a third aspect: using human-centered design (HCD) techniques to partner with people caught in a crisis and co-create technology-based solutions to problems. Recognising people as the best experts on their own lives and using that knowledge to develop apps, bots and other digital tools should ensure that these are:
- More accessible to a range of people.
- More relevant to their needs.
- Safer.
- More trusted.
About the research
This playbook was developed by CLEAR Global as part of an initiative funded by the UK Humanitarian Innovation Hub (UKHIH) aiming to establish participatory and community-driven approaches to developing digital technology with people from crisis-affected communities. The goal is to ensure that technology can be used easily and effectively as a humanitarian tool, enhancing aid delivery.
Digital technology should be considered just one tool among a comprehensive approach for meeting urgent needs and supporting throughout ongoing crises and recovery. For technology solutions to achieve the most positive impact, they must be co-created with the people they aim to serve.
The original content was developed into two pdf guides.
The Basics